Re Taibbi
1. He’s right that you can’t give up on people.
2. There are limits beyond which you shouldn’t compromise.
3. The difference between being at the limit of your willingness to compromise and giving up on someone may not be apparent from a quick look.
4. The national Democratic Party should have offered more resources to Thompson and Quist not because they expected them to win but as a demonstration that they haven’t given up on KS or MT.
5. So if the Dems need a new message then what should that new message be? I’ll bet that a significant fraction of those who say Dems are out of touch either don’t have a coherent suggestion for what a good way forward is (“rational ignorance”) or their preferred path forward is a kinder, gentler Republicanism. Should we accommodate those views? How much effort should we spend trying to win them over?
6. In a number of Midwestern states Democratic vote totals were way down from 2008 while Republican votes didn’t increase much. (Michigan comes to mind. I don’t have the numbers handy.) We need to win those voters back.